Comment by anotherhacker | Hacker News Reader

Comment by anotherhacker | Hacker News Reader

The author is flat out wrong. The Hedonic Treadmill has been disproven. Moreover, the author seems to be conflating the concept of the treadmill, with adaptation. The former denotes the subject returns to the original state. The latter recognizes that while we become accustomed to new things, we still improve in happiness.

The author is also misquoting, or misunderstanding, Kahneman. Kahneman isn't talking at all about the treadmill. He's talking about what he called the "Focusing Illusion"-- a fancy way of saying "the grass is always greener on the other side..."

Relevant links:

"Beyond the Hedonic Treadmill: Revising the Adaptation Theory of Well-Being" http://www.factorhappiness.at/downloads/quellen/S9_Diener.pd...

Kahneman tried to explain the hedonic treadmill via with his own aspiration treadmill. He claims that he not only failed, but the data were opposite to his hypothesis.

https://www.edge.org/response-detail/10056

Kahneman's paper where that OP misquotes Kahneman from:

http://psiexp.ss.uci.edu/research/teaching/Schkade_Kahneman_...

>'Kahneman tried to explain the hedonic treadmill via with his own aspiration treadmill. He claims that he not only failed, but the data were opposite to his hypothesis.'

https://www.edge.org/response-detail/10056

Uh... what that Edge article you are linking shows is that 'experienced happiness' which he thought would be a better measurement of happiness than life satisfaction is even more immune to your life circumstances:

>"This was the first of many such findings: income, marital status and education all influence experienced happiness less than satisfaction, and we could show that the difference is not a statistical artifact. "

This only strengthens the OP's opinion...

He does tell us at the end of the article that GDP correlates with the happiness levels of countries. But that doesn't really detract from the OP's reasoning. (Who knows if that's even causative, instability & war could cause both GDP & happiness to drop.)

Even the study you are linking suggests revisions, and is far from 'disproving' the hedonic treadmill theory.

> This was the first of many such findings: income, marital status and education all influence experienced happiness less than satisfaction, and we could show that the difference is not a statistical artifact.

Is that saying affect of (income, marital status and education) on experienced happiness < affect of (income, marital status and education) on satisfaction, or is it saying affect of (income, marital status and education) on experienced happiness < affect of (satisfaction) on experienced happiness ?

I'd rather we not get bogged down in downstream minutia. Instead let's focus on the fallacy in the OP's core argument:

The original Treadmill Theory has been discredited--or at least fallen out of favor. Why? Because the original Treadmill theory is about people returning to the same baseline level of happiness. That's why the originators called it a treadmill - you don't go anywhere / change / improve / make progress etc.

That's why the "adaptation" analogy is preferred. After an initial rush of either happiness or sadness, you do return to a baseline...but this baseline is different that what it was before.

The reality, and summary, is this: nice things do make your life better. At first there's a rush of excitement over your upgrade. When that initial rush goes away, you backtrack a little bit, but still realize a life which is better than what it used to be. The inverse is true for tragedy.

For whatever reason, instead of the succinct description I gave, the author chose a long winded piece, added some charts with questional data, and slapped on a link bait title.

<shrug>

>For whatever reason, instead of the succinct description I gave, the author chose a long winded piece, added some charts with questional data, and slapped on a link bait title.

That's because their post this way got much more illuminating than the "succinct description" which does not even cover the same ground.

> The material standard of living of a homeless person in modern-day Manhattan is several dozens of times higher than the wealthiest of kings ten thousand years ago.

It was here that I stopped reading.

Why? It seems true for some of the decent definitions of "material standard of living" although certainly not all. What they really lack (relatively) is social power, kinship tie quality, and many other more important things than internet access, smart phones, and technology (all of which may correlate with depression.

Like what? Being able to eat a big mac? That's a stretch by nearly any definition.

Just for reference, 10ka means pre-agricultural Stone Age, ie, tiny hunter-gatherer communities living in small huts.

haha same here...i even said that to myself as i was hitting the back button.

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